What's so wonderful about writer/director/actor/producer/stand-up comedian Ricky Gervais?

Well, if you even have to ask, I'd venture you haven't watched much television in the past say, seven years, or else you would have heard the boob tube buzz about The Office (Brit or Yank) or Extras (or his viral Microsoft training videos) and met and fallen funny bone over feet for one of the RG productions.

Either way, even if you didn't ask, we'll tell you why we bow down to the cheeky god of comedy -- a mischievous, chipmunk-cheeked cherub with a girly giggle who relentlessly exposes humanity's unflattering underbelly. In groundbreaking sitcoms such as the The Office and Extras, Gervais and partner in comic crime Stephen Merchant train their mockumentary microscope on the mundane misery and unfulfilled lives of average and below-average Joes and Joannas, as well as the self-important insanity of Hollywood's most successful, irreverently poking fun at their behavior -- their prejudices, insecurities, hopes and failures -- with insightful satire. Gervais mines humor from the minute, dull details of life, unearthing the absurd in the every day and chronicling petty inter-office wars.

Yet RG's characters are only heroes or villains in a momentary rather than an absolute sense (like most humans), committing offenses in moments of emotional weakness or social awkwardness and then later redeeming themselves with their remorse and/or sincere attempts to set things right. Gervais' compassion for his characters is clear. He pokes fun, but with pathos. Creating characters so recognizable as well as ridiculous, their awkwardness is embarrassing to watch, their pain palpable. It's Death of a Salesman meets Monty Python.

And without a PC airbrush to soften stereotypical attitudes or remarks, Gervais' parodies leave no political, sexual, or racial ignoramus un-lampooned, no viewer excluded from the joke. He accomplishes this not only as a brilliant writer and director, but also as a compelling actor starring in the BBC Office, Extras, and more recently, the comedies Ghost Town and his latest Homo sapien spoof, The Invention of Lying -- the story of one man who can lie, in a world where everyone else can only tell the truth.

A social satirist and explorer in the tradition of Dickens and Dilbert, RG has arguably inspired the current comic zeitgeist. At the very least, his pants-down, foot-in-mouth humor entertains us; at best, it helps us chuckle at, fathom, and forgive our own flaws and foibles and perhaps enhances our empathy for the fools we work, play, and otherwise cross paths with.

Next on Ricky's roster: Films Flanimals ("ugly, misshapen" 3-D animated "losers" on a mission to change the world) and Cemetery Junction (another small-town, dreaming-of-escape story set in a 1970s insurance company).

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